Police Minis

[coopersean]

Looks like the PYT cars were Cooper 998's, and PYT768F made it to at least 1986.

In addition to those posted above, according to the DVLA, OKD689 is currently on the road, and painted green and OKD686F was last taxed in 2012.

[coopersean]

Here's another that belonged to a mate in the 70's

Looks like it was last taxed in 1997.

[mab01uk]

Discount policies.......... To be honest, when I went to buy my last-of-the-line Mini RCS500, the sales girl at nearby Hartwells, wouldn't give me 1 penny discount for cash, no trade in , not registered, no finance, don't care about the colour - no nothing. I'll take it home on a trailer. She told me with a straight face that these last mini\s were flying off the shelves and I should grab the opportunity to get one while I had the chance. Over a year later the following summer and after mini production had long ceased the local Oxford papers showed almost 1000 unsold MGRover cars including hundreds of unsold and unloved mini's and Coopers lined up on the old USAF runways at Heyford, with grass growing up to the bottoms of the sills. So much for selling like hot cakes and flying off the shelves. It was reported that a large Mini tuning centre/garage bought a lot of them at a discount they were already rusting out where they stood!

In late Summer/Autumn 2000 the price of the MPi Mini was upped yet further just as production was nearing an end. However in spite of the hype surrounding the demise of the Mini, sales didn't take off quite as thought but dropped further......so soon after MG-Rover dropped the price by £900 to get rid of the last 2,000 stock Mini's to find retail customers before the New MINI R50 (mostly designed by Rover but launched under BMW) appeared in early 2001. In the Autumn of 2001 you could still buy a 'new old stock' classic Mini MPi.......

[1071 S]

Well, the thread is about police Minis This was written by a well known Oz 'muttering rotter' after Minis swept aside all opposition at the Bathurst 500.... Romsey Quints was a sobriquet used by Bill Tuckey when he wasn't being entirely serious.....

The "letter" was printed in Wheels Magazine in the mid 60s....

I could provide a glossary for non Oz speakers



"Dear Romsey,
I reckon there ought to be something we can do about it. You know, like maybe one of them omsbudsmans or what the hell they are. I mean a beak shouldn't orter be allowed to play favourites, and there are some things he just can't say about blokes and their cars. Just take what this beak said about my FJ. Now I'm pretty proud of my old FJ. It's got all the good gear on it. Cam, head, six S.U.s, tramp rods, the whole lot. Do 120, no sweat. Okay, so it's got a bit of rust in it - what FJ hasn't? - and the brakes aren't all that hot and I was GOING to get some new tyres but the extractor cost a bit more than I reckoned it would. But goes like the hammers and like I say I'm pretty proud of it.
Anyway, I reckon maybe I better tell you what started this all off .
I was going down to Canberra a couple of months ago and I just come down the Razorback on to that gas road into Picton. There I was, cruising along about 70 minding me own business when I see a Mini in the mirror coming up pretty fast. He gets closer a bit and I can see it's pedalled by this fat geezer. He tucks in up me ginger and pushes me along a bit so I give the FJ a few herbs to see what this old bloke's got in him, see, and he looks like he's gunna be in it. I screw it up a bit more and he gets all switched on like, and he pulls out and tries to blow me off. Well, did he ever have a thrill coming to him because the Mini that can take on my FJ and do any good just ain't been soldered together yet. So I put the old size 10 right down through the floor.
Funny thing, that fat geezer in his Mini stayed pretty close all the way. I got her up on two wheels for that big left - hander into Picton - the fat geezer made up a bit here - and we touched about 110 down the town. Well, jeez, I reckon old fatso could drive cause he was right up me as we ripped under the railway bridge, scaring the whatsis out of a bloke in a Valiant coming the other way.We went like hell up the hill and just where she levels out there was another fat geezer in another Mini. Well, he got all bloodshot when we went past and seems he reckoned he could do all right too and latched on the back.
Just outer Picton there’s this big right-hander. Now you can’t see much but I never seen anything coming the other way, only a coupla trucks now and then, and I been on the road a lot so I take a real good Beechey line through there and give a bloke in an old Anglia a hernia, and the two fat geezers chicken out and drop back, but they got guts see and they keeps coming. Now guts is a thing I like in a bloke so I go a give these two credit. Anyway, 'we keep going and just outer Tahmoor you wouldn't believe there's another fat geezer in a Mini. Must all be in a club or something. This one joins in too and I starts thinking by the time we gets to Canberra we gunna be able to start a square-dance team.
Just as we fang over the railway bridge into Mittagong I can see in the mirror a coupla feds in a Rambler coming up.
Now a lot of people reckon I got no brains, but I'm not completely dopey see and I get more sense than to try and drag a cop, so I give it away and drop back to 35. Well these feds wave us over, so I stop and the three fat geezers stop and the feds go back and jaw them a bit and I can't hear what they're saying, but they all starts laughing and the three fat geezers get back into their Minis and drive away. So I reckon these Mittagong Rambler feds are good sports and don't mind a few blokes enjoying theirselves as long as they ain't driving dangerous, but they front up and start tearing me apart and saying pretty rotten things, so I asks them what about the fat geezers and how come they got out of it and they starts laughing again and the next I know I'm in the Rambler and they run me in.
So that's what started this all off and I'm a bit cheesed because I got the book threw at me by this beak bloke and he says I'm guilty of all sorts of things and I tried to get away from the cops. I tell him I didn't try to get away from the cops and I only saw the Rambler when we got to Mittagong and I stopped right away and he looks at me like I got no brains and asks me if I think I'm Bob Hope or someone. So then I kick up a stink about the three fat geezers not getting lumbered and everyone laughs their guts out and the beak says something about being in contempt but I can see as all I'm in is the can.
Finished up I lost my licence for five years which ain't gunna be easy to take but I was looking at a gear Customline a coupla days ago so I'm buying it and I'm gunna spend the five years turning it into a real screamer and no fat geezers in no Minis are gunna get near me."

Cheers, Ian

[Pete]

I knew Gary Shaw from back when I ran the Chesire region of the MCR, his car had a trick Longman engine in it and I'm sure it went abroad, Germany I think. We also had a much modified KKD car in the area, it was black. I had MXJ 278H, a Manchester car as pictured here :

[spoon.450]

I knew Gary Shaw from back when I ran the Chesire region of the MCR, his car had a trick Longman engine in it ....

Yes it did...and a Jack Knight box. He spent loads of money on it.

[Spitz]

On the first page there are pictures of:

OKD701F
700F
692F
698F
697F

....how is it that 701F is a MkI and the rest are MkII? Is it just that a previous owner retro'd the grille? There is no shot of the rear to tell

[Peter Laidler]

I would say without any shadow of doubt that it's the wrong grille

[davidscothorn]

The rear window suggests Mk2

[Peter Laidler]

That was very astute David. I agree

[davidscothorn]

Thanks Peter. Reverse engineering, or something like that.

[davidscothorn]

Here's one taken at the Cumbria Classic Show in the '80s, VKA 303H. Also have a pic of VKA 290H, also taken at one of the early Cumbria Classic Shows, this one was just in OEW/Black without any of its Plod markings etc, haven't got this pic scanned yet.

Did all the VKA series have Mk3 bootlids?
Who knows the date/ chassis number of change please?
Presnell does not mention them in context of Mk2's
Thanks

[66Traveller]

Pete's line up of Manchester Mk2 Cooper S are in fact JNB 1F, JNB 2F, JNB 3F and JNB 4F - the second policeman in the photo is my father. The photos were taken early 1968 in Birchfields Park, Fallowfield for the Manchester Evening News. As my father noted Manchester City Police cars always had good registration numbers because the Police were responsible for the VRO! I'll post another photo in the same series.

[Pete]

I think this is an interior shot of a JNB car..

[66Traveller]

Yes I think you are right Pete - I have a photo of one of them on a dyno. Interesting speedo and instrument panel with "p" lights. And what do you suppose the horn button modification is - for the Pye Westminster radio?

[Peter Laidler]

Can anyone tell us who fitted the cop speedometers as shown? It's always been a bit of an enigma because Smiths had calibrated police mini speedos available for the factory, together with a certificate of accuracy attached to the vehicle file against the instrument serial number that remained with it - or until the instrument failed the 3% accuracy across the range test. Some forces wouldn't accept a 2mph reading, it had to be 1MPH graduations or nothing. (they hadn't invented eye-line parallax back then!) so Smiths supplied them too.

What were the other gauges. Can see water temp at top left, Amps? top right. Fuel ? and oil pressure?

[Pete]

Another Manchester car having it's speedo checked on the rollers...

[Ronnie]

Can anyone tell us who fitted the cop speedometers as shown? It's always been a bit of an enigma because Smiths had calibrated police mini speedos available for the factory, together with a certificate of accuracy attached to the vehicle file against the instrument serial number that remained with it - or until the instrument failed the 3% accuracy across the range test. Some forces wouldn't accept a 2mph reading, it had to be 1MPH graduations or nothing. (they hadn't invented eye-line parallax back then!) so Smiths supplied them too.

What were the other gauges. Can see water temp at top left, Amps? top right. Fuel ? and oil pressure?

From what I remember Durham's S's did'nt have speedo's like that A friend wrote one of the Mk1's off I might still have some of the wires out of the harness lying around. I must admit I like that with exception to the coiled cable, how many turns lock to lock on a mini

Peter I think also in those (good old days) the traffic patrol cars used to usually have an observer sitting directly in front of a speedo like that one on the navigators side so no parallax (allegedly) when they booked you.

[Peter Laidler]

The speedo shown isn't on the co-drivers side Ron, it's in the central position....., dead in line with the central ash tray. Someone explained the odd horn/speaker switch contraption a few posta ago regarding other cop cars.

The oblong speaker on the left side of the parcel tray was a standard PYE type radio speaker used pretty-well everywhere including in MoD radio sets fitted to tanks and other stuff. I would imagine that most of the stuff inside the radios were the same. Some of the MoD stuff was just militarised Pye Cambridge, Oxford and Westminster stuff. No doubt somewhere in the collecting world there'll be a Police Radio collector. The Army Clansman and tank/vehicle hand-sets were exactly the same used in cop cars

[Ronnie]

^
"The speedo shown isn't on the co-drivers side Ron, it's in the central position....., dead in line with the central ash tray." So in that situation you could get a parallax error.

I know that peter the point that I was making was that most of the Road traffic cars including Durham and that I know South Yorkshire used to have a callibrated speedo on the passenger side and before the cut in crew numbers (mid 70's) were always two up, I also believe that they usualy would not go to court unless the car was double crewed.
There was a measured mile marked off in tenths, just behind my house where they used to check their speedo's weekly, and after they had booked anyone (end of shift)